Last season we visited St Mary’s in October and came away with three points after a 0-3 victory, courtesy of goals from Eden Hazard, Ross Barkley and Alvaro Morata. We go into the game in seventh position, while Southampton currently sit in 14th place. Our recent away form has been good with our only defeat coming on the first day of the season against Manchester United. The only issue has been the conceding of goals, although this was rectified against Brighton last weekend.
We have players who have recently come back from injuries and illness, but there are still one or two missing, who won’t be part of the squad, namely Emerson, Loftus-Cheek and Toni Rudiger. However, one player who has been bought back on a gradual basis is Callum Hudson-Odoi; he played the full 90 minutes recently against Grimsby and more recently has played bit parts in his recuperation. His run and cross for Willian against Lille shows what he can produce. Once fully fit, I am positive that Callum will be in the starting eleven on a match-by-match basis.
Southampton will have Cedric Soares missing along with Moussa Djenepo, although Alex McCarthy could be back in contention. Last season’s 0-3 victory ended up being one of the more-easier games that we’ve played at St Mary’s in recent times. The During 2017-18 we went to St Mary’s and were losing 2-0, until Olivier Giroud came on later in the game, to turn the match in our favour; eventually we won 2-3 and we also beat Southampton 2-0 in the Semi-Final of the FA Cup the following week at Wembley.Regarding the FA Cup, who can forget our 1-5 victory at Southampton in 2013; two goals that afternoon from Demba Ba on his Chelsea debut and a goal from Frank Lampard helped us to victory in what was a pulsating atmosphere at St Mary’s, thanks to the away support.
Sunday’s game will be a difficult one to predict, as Southampton may look to defend, but look to break, plus they’ll look at our recent defensive displays, especially at set-pieces and think that they’ll have a chance of victory. Considering that we can score goals and let the odd two in here and there, I’m going with a 1-3 Chelsea victory. Just a small pointer in my direction (Not being big-headed, of course!) I have predicted the last two scores exactly right.
